Hello Steve. I raise or try to raise a crop of tobacco every year, though I also try to quit every year as well. I sometimes think it's harder to quit growing it than it is to quit smoking it! You don't mention what you want your tobacco for. Is it intended for smoking or chewing? Do you want to make cigars? The type that I grow is Burly tobacco. It's used as a filler in cigarettes and is the tobacco that adds the flavor, some would say the "bite" to cigarette tobacco. We usually start our plants around the third week of March and try to set after the 20th of May. I'm in North Eastern Kentucky, about a half hour south of Maysville. I'm sure there are people closer to you who would give you plants, but you are welcome to some of mine. I always have some left over. Again depending on what you want to do with it, there are many varieties that serve differing purposes. It's hard to get, but the old fashion open pollinated burly varieties were a sort of all purpose tobacco. My grandpa showed me when I was young how he made his own chewing tobacco from a type he grew called Sweet Scent. After the tobacco was cured to suit him, he would pick out a block of straight grained buckeye or poplar and use his brace and an expansion bit to drill several holes about 2 inches in diameter about 3 or 4 inches deep. He would pack tobacco leaves, dried peaches, and brown sugar into the holes until there was just enough room for a wood plug. When the hole was packed full, he would plug it and lay the block up in the barn. After a while, when he judged it had finished. He would split the block open and the plugs would fall out. He would then use his pocket knife to cut off a "chaw" of tobacco. We grow an organic crop for the American Spirit brand cigarettes, though as the market seems to change every year, and help gets harder to find, I'm thinking the days of me doing it are numbered.


7 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

Thanks Jerry, I may take you up on your offer. There used to be quite a few people around here that grew small plots of tobacco but all the ones I knew have passed away. I really don't want it for a specific purpose. I did find some old recipes in the Foxfire series of books for chewing tobacco that I thought might be interesting to experiment with. I think burley is what my neighbor used to grow.


7 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum

Sustainable Seed Company in California sells a lot of varieties. sustainableseedco.com/pipe-tobacco-seed-types/

Didn't they use to use tobacco in some form as an insecticide? It'd be organic. If you're experimenting, it could be interesting.


7 years ago via Forums | Front Porch Forum